The Unknown Battle of Midway

November 15, 2005
Author of a notable war memoir (" Crossing the Line," 1994), Kernan returns to1942's Battle of Midway, in which he was ordnance man on the aircraft carrier " Enterprise" . Considered the strategic turning point of the Pacific War, Midway is seen by military historians as an improbable American victory, one marred by the near-total annihilation of American torpedo bomber squadrons and whose story, Kernan remarks, has never been thoroughly studied. Because of the obsolescence of torpedo, or "Devastator," planes, mounting a coordinated strike was the pilots' only hope of survival, one that failed to materialize due to snafus that Kernan grimly but rivetingly relates. Attacking alone, the Devastators had the sacrificial effect of distracting Japanese fighter planes from dive bombers that eventually sank the Japanese carriers. "In the years since," Kernan writes, "this unintended action has become the official justification for the tragedy." Those justifications are the telling component in Kernan's autopsy, as he detects deceptions between the lines of after-action reports. An incisive and laconic writer, Kernan knows his facts and presents them with deep feeling. A World War II must-read. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)